Get JSON response from a REST API in Cucumber test

I'm delving into the world of test automation this week, it seems. Tasked, at this moment, with refactoring a set of Cucumber tests, written in Java. (And I didn't write them.)

I have to make requests to out REST API, and parse the response.

Currently the tests are using RestAssured to make the request and parse the response. This has certain idiosyncracies, notably that if you have any floating point values in the response will end up as floats and not doubles or BigDecimals or even Strings.